Abacus
- 3000 BCE, early
form of beads on wires, used in China
- From semitic abaq, meaning dust.
Charles Babbage
(1791-1871)
Born: December
26, 1791
son of Benjamin
Babbage a London banker (part of the emerging middle
class: property, education, wealth, and status)
Trinity College,
Cambridge [MA, 1817]with John
Herschel and George Peacock, produced a translation of LaCroix’s
calculus text.
December 1830, a
dispute with his chief engineer, Joseph Clement, over control of the project,
ends work on the difference engine
Clement is
allowed to keep all tools and drawings by English law
Importance of the
Difference Engine
1. First attempt
to devise a computing machine that
was automatic in action and well adapted, by its
printing mechanism, to a mathematical task of considerable
importance.
2. An example of
government subsidization of innovation
and technology development
3. Spin offs to the machine-tool
“industry”
Ada Augusta Byron, 1815-1852
born on 10
December 1815.
named after
Byron's half sister, Augusta, who had been his mistress.
After Byron had
left for the Continent with a parting shot -- 'When shall we threemeet again?'
-- Ada was brought up by her mother.
Translated Menebrea’s paper into
English
Taylor’s: “The editorial notes are by
the translator, the Countess of Lovelace.”
Footnotes
enhance the text and provide examples of how the Analytical Engine could be
used, i.e., how it would be programmed to solve problems!
Myth: “world’s
first programmer”
Herman Hollerith
(1860-1929)
Born: February
29, 1860
Columbia School
of Mines (New York)
1879 hired at
Census Office
1882 MIT faculty
(T is
for technology!)
1883 St. Louis (inventor)
1884 Patent
Office (Wash, DC)
1885 “Expert and
Solicitor of Patents”
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
•1st large scale electronic digital computer
•designed and
constructed at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering
of the University of Pennsylvania
–since 1920s, faculty had worked with Aberdeen Proving Ground’s Ballistics
Research Laboratory (BRL)
•1943 Mauchly and Eckert
prepare a proposal for the US Army to build an Electronic Numerical Integrator
–calculate a trajectory in 1 second
•May 31, 1943 Construction of ENIAC starts
•1944 early thoughts
on stored program computers by members of the
ENIAC team
•July 1944
two accumulators working
Early Thoughts
about Stored Program Computing
•January
1944 Moore School team
thinks of better ways to do things; leverages delay line memories from War
research
•September
1944 John von Neumann visits
–Goldstine’s meeting at Aberdeen Train Station
•October
1944 Army extends the ENIAC
contract to include research on the EDVAC and the stored-program
concept
•Spring
1945 ENIAC working well
•June
1945 First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC: Electronic Discrete
Variable Automatic Computer
First Draft Report (June
1945)
•John von Neumann
prepares (?) a report on
the EDVAC which identifies how the machine could be programmed (unfinished very
rough draft)
–academic: publish for the good of science
–engineers: patents, patents, patents
•von Neumann
never repudiates the myth that he wrote it; most members of the ENIAC team ontribute ideas
Manchester Mark I (1948)
•Freddy Williams
and Tom Kilburn
•Developed an
electrostatic memory
•Prototype
operational June 21, 1948 and machine to execute a stored program
•Memory: 32 words
of 32 bits each
•Storage: single
Williams tube (CRT)
•Fully
operational: October 1949
•Ferranti Mark I
delivered in February 1951
EDSAC
•Maurice Wilkes, University
Mathematical Laboratory, Cambridge University
•Moore School
Lectures
•Electronic Delay Storage Automatic
Calculator, EDSAC operational May, 1949
•J. Lyons Company and the LEO,
Lyons Electronic Office, operational fall 1951
National Physical
Laboratory
•Alan Turing
•Automatic
Computing Engine (ACE)
•Basic design by
spring, 1946
•Harry Huskey joins project
•Pilot ACE
working, May 10, 1950
•English Electric: DEUCE, 1954
•Full version of
ACE at NPL, 1959
Remington Rand UNIVAC
•43 UNIVACs were delivered
to government and industry
•Memory: mercury delay lines: 1000 words of
12 alphanumeric characters
•Secondary storage: metal oxide
tape
•Access time: 222
microseconds (average)
•Instruction set:
45 operation codes
•Accumulators: 4
•Clock: 2.25 Mhz
Additional Information:
Computer History
The history of the computer owes its existence to the fact that people, who are lazy by nature, have always sought to improve their ability to calculate, in order to reduce errors and save time.
Origins: The abacus
The "abacus" was invented in the year 700; it was in use for a long time, and still is in some countries.
Then came the logarithm
The invention of the logarithm is generally credited to the Scotsman John Napier (1550-1617). In 1614, he showed that multiplication and division could be performed using a series of additions. This discovery led, in 1620, to the invention of the slide rule.
However, the true father of logarithm theory is Mohamed Ybn Moussa Al-Khawarezmi, an Arab scholar from the Persian town of Khawarezm. This scholar also developed algebra, a term which comes from the Arabic "Al-Jabr", meaning compensation, with the implication being "looking for the unknown variable X in order to compensate by balancing the results of the calculations."
The first calculating machines
In 1623, William Schickard invented the first mechanical calculating machine.
In 1642, Blaise Pascal created the arithmetic machine (called the Pascaline), a machine that could add and subtract, intended to help his father, a tax collector.
In 1673, Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz added multiplication and division to the Pascaline.
In 1834, Charles Babbage invented the difference engine, which could evaluate functions.
However, once he learned that a weaving machine (called a Jacquard loom) was programmed with perforated cards, he started building a calculating machine that could take advantage of this revolutionary idea.
In 1820, the first four-function mechanical calculators debuted. They could:
• add
• subtract
• multiply
• divide
By 1885, they were being built with keyboards for entering data. Electrical motors quickly supplanted cranks.
Programmable computers
In 1938, Konrad Zuse invented a computer based around electromechanical relays: The Z3. This computer was the first to use binary instead of decimals
In 1937, Howard Aiken developed a programmable computer 17 metres long and 2.5 metres high, which could calculate 5 times faster than a human.
It was IBM's Mark I.
It was built using 3300 gears and 1400 switches linked with 800 km of electrical wiring.
In 1947, the Mark II appeared, with its predecessor's gears being replaced by electronic components.
